Using Other People's Trackers

Yes, that's right, you can jump onto other people's trackers instead of
relying on one of your own! You can share your documents without having either a
web server or a tracker. Suppose I want to use the
postgresql.org tracker: all I need to do is download one of their latest
postgresql torrents and read the first couple of lines to identify the
tracker URL:

The postgresql.org tracker will now manage all subsequent connections to the
pg_live ISO. You can review the tracker's statistics by using your browser and
going to http://bt.postrgresql.org:6969. (Some sites list only the md5 checksum
without naming the file, but you can compare it with the checksum generated by
your own tracker).

It's good etiquette to request permission for using other people's trackers.
You can prevent other people from using your tracker--as postgresql.org
does, by the way--by telling bttrack to track only those
torrents of which it has copies in a user-defined directory. For example, if I
place a copy of the pg_live torrent file in a directory where
bttrack can see it, it will limit the tracker to file sharing for
just pg_live. That's the purpose of the --show_names and
--allowed_dir switches:

Conclusion

I always seem to be ending articles when I say this, but ... I've only just
scratched the surface of what you can do. I guess you'll just have to play
with it to learn more. I recommend reading the man pages for
apt-get, wget, cat,
btmakemetafile, bttrack,
bittorrent-downloader, and btreannounce.

Have fun.

Robert Bernier
is the PostgreSQL business intelligence analyst for SRA America, a
subsidiary of Software Research America (SRA).